To crack IIT, students do better in boards

The new format for IIT selection has pushed students to do better in their board exams. As per the new format, only the top-20 percentile students from each board are eligible to compete for the IITs. Vanita Srivastava reports.

The new format for IIT selection has pushed students to do better in their board exams. As per the new format, only the top-20 percentile students from each board are eligible to compete for the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

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As students competed to make it to the 20 percentile, the cut-off required to be in that bracket has gone up substantially.

For instance, those who scored 67.5 % in Karnataka board last year were in the top-20 percentile bracket. This year, only those who scored more than 86% marks made the cut — a sharp increase of nearly 18%.

Similarly, Chhattisgarh board and Meghalaya board have seen a jump of 10%, Tamil Nadu board (13%), UP board (8%), Mizoram board (20 %), Kerala (18%) and in Andhra Pradesh (5%).

In some boards such as Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal, there has been a marginal increase.

The idea of encouraging students to pay more attention to board exams is rooted in the fact that students ignore it to focus on cracking IIT entrance.

By tying the IIT entry to the performance in the board exam, aspirants are forced to focus on it resulting in higher scores. But some argue that this may also be due to liberal evaluation of boards.